word count: 1,787
Character(s): Wally West/Kid Flash, Roy Harper/Red Arrow mentions of: Dinah Lance/Black Canary, Oliver Queen/Green Arrow
disclaimer: disclaimed
notes: set before Roy goes solo. Originally written for the YJ Christmas exchange be my recieve-e was a butt who dropped out.

"Ugh," Roy groaned pushing back the many papers crowded around his Chemistry textbook. He sat by himself in his room dimly lit by the glow of his desk lamp. He knew he shouldn't have waited till last minute to do his homework and with mid-terms just around the corner. The sad part was Winter Break was so close he could taste it.

But seriously; what kind of teacher made him memorize the entire goddamn Periodic Table? It wasn't his fault he had to do all of this last minute; between hero stuff and his family's ridiculous preparations for Christmas where could he find the time?

Enough wallowing in self pity He reminded himself pulling the worksheets, charts, and notes he had to finish forward again. He felt the pang of another headache throbbing somewhere in his cranium. "Okay," He breathed closing his eyes, "Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon belong to the Noble Gases- also known as the Inert Gases due to their inability to bond." He opened an eye to check his answer. He let out a relieved sigh as noted he was correct.

He pulled the textbook closer to him and picked up a pen he glanced from the textbook to the notebook paper back and forth for about thirty minutes until he finished two sets of the blasted cornell notes. He could think of a thousand things he would rather be doing than this homework; like going on patrol with Ollie for instance but of course Dinah just had to ask him if he finished his homework. You could not lie to Dinah, her glare was like acid.

He sighed and got back down to business.

Two hours of tedious Chemistry and Physics work done Roy decided he deserved a break. He walked up to his door and pulled it open being greeted by a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. He raised an eyebrow, Dinah never cooks.

As he crossed the room in a couple of strides he was met by an obstruction- a ginger obstruction; holding a half-empty package of Roy's favorite cookies on his shoulder, tottering milk in one hand, and holding cookies in the spaces of his hands. "Noy!" The freckled teen exclaimed his voice muffled by the (Roy's!) cookie in his mouth. Roy's expression remained deadpan, "What are you doing here," He inquired; not bothering say it a question form.

"I came to hang out with my favorite archer." Wally grinned setting down his (still not his!) cookies and milk onto the expensive coffee table sitting on an imported rug in the Queen Penthouse living room.

Roy pulled his cookies to him and sat on the couch, watching the rookie speedster carefully set down the crystal glass holding the white liquid onto the table with narrowed eyes. He then proceeded to plop down onto the couch unceremoniously.

Wally gulped down half of the milk and then shoved the cookies he had previously held into his mouth. He then turned to look for the mysteriously disappeared cookie package to see Roy guarding it slightly with his arm. He decided against asking the older teen for the cookies and instead opted to strike up a conversation, "Sooooo... what've you been up to?" His jade eyes looked to him in some sort of anticipation. Roy turned his eyes to him, but didn't answer. Wally took this as a sign and kept quiet for the awkward minutes that ensued.

Roy finally let out an audible sigh and got up and returned to his room. Wally waited until Roy was about two feet away then emptied the cookie package in a couple of seconds, gulped the milk, stared at the mess he had made, figured Black Canary would clean it up (ha!) and then scrambled after Roy and made it into the room just before the red-haired teen closed the door.

Roy scowled as Wally made himself comfortable in his previously made bed, "What are you doing?" He asked bitterly as Wally surveyed his room. Wally's eyes landed on Roy's cluttered desk, "Oooh is this the Periodic Synopsis?" He asked not bothering for Roy to answer before he got up and sat himself in Roy's chair. Wally picked up a pencil and proceeded to finish three of Roy's worksheets in approximately six seconds; the pencil was actually smoking.

"Well, that was fun." Wally beamed reaching over Roy to pick up an abandoned chip bag. "H-how..." Roy stammered looking back from the work to the munching fourteen-year-old. "That was basic knowledge of the Periodic Table and elemental formulas." He replied matter-of-factly and began spinning in Roy's chair.

Roy looked over to his desk and found that Wally had finished all of his remaining worksheets. He was between happy and absolutely astounded. "T-thanks." Was all the teen could muster as he plopped himself down into his bean bag chair clutching the completed worksheets which would've deprived Roy of his weekend otherwise.

Roy reached into his backpack and pulled out the checklist. He checked each of the things done off the list whispering their names with each fluid strike of the pen. He was left with one box unchecked: Fill-In Periodic Table.

That was easy enough, all he had to do was copy from the pre-done Periodic Table. So with that Roy set down to work with Wally's munching and the TV channels flipping every five seconds as background noise. Twenty-two minutes later Roy finally set down his pencil and shoved all of his work into his backpack. Though as he was doing so he noticed a bright yellow Post-It sticking to one of the papers, he picked it up and read: "DON'T FORGET ORAL AND WRITTEN REPORT FOR THE PERIODIC TABLE ON MONDAY. ABSOLUTELY NO USE OF THE TABLE IS PERMITTED" in his own rushed handwriting.

Wally's reverie was broken by the sound of Roy's head coming in not-so-soft contact with the desk. Wally scrambled out of the bed and was at Roy's side in one super-speed-aided step. "You good, Speedy?" He asked titling his head to look at Roy.

"How am I supposed to memorize the entire Periodic Table in one night?" Roy groaned. Wally raised an eyebrow, that was very out of character. As he watched the teen slowly bang his head on the wood a lightbulb sparked in the speedster's head and a grin spread across his freckled features.

"Well," He dragged on with a merry tone, Roy looked up, "we could do it through song."

Roy's eyes widened, this kid wasn't about to actually sing was he? Wally then used his super speed to grab Roy's computer, open it, type something in, and then steady it on top of Roy's flat screen.

Wally cleared his throat and Roy was genuinely scared as to what was going to occur next. Upbeat piano music began to play from Roy's laptop.

"Now, if I may digress momentarily from the main stream of this evenings symposium, I'd like to sing a song which is completely pointless but is something which I picked up during my career as a scientist. This may prove useful to some of you some day perhaps, in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. It's simply the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune." Wally rushed in a voice deeper than his usual.

"There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,

And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,

And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium," Wally joyously sang skipping around the room.

"Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,

And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,

And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium," Wally exhaled a gasp, "And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium." Wally stretched out the "thallium" with great gusto.

"There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,

And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,

And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,

And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium." Wally flashed a smile to Roy, who was still unsure if this was really happening. Wally was practically having a full-on musical about the elements in his bedroom.

Wally twirled and clicked his heels in the air as he jumped, and just as Roy thought it was the end of this semi-nightmare Wally sucked in more breath and belted out another verse,

"There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,

And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,

And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,

Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.

And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,

Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,

And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium," He let out another grand gasp, "And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium." By this time he was trying to get Roy to sing along. Though the teen remained in his seat, contemplating whether or not he should record this for future blackmail purposes. Okay so maybe Batman's prote`ge` has been rubbing off on him a little too much. Though it was still an open idea.

But it seemed that for the last verse Wally had taken it upon himself to make as "spectacular" as possible for he was now bouncing up and down on Roy's Egyptian cotton sheet covered bed,

"There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,

And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,

And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,

And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium." Wally spun on Roy's bed and jumped off, landing in front of the archer, "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, and there may be many others, but they haven't been dis-cov-ard." Wally finished with another twirl on his toes.

"And those are lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, and darmstadtium." Wally informed the blinking sidekick and then collapsed onto Roy's bed.

"That was the Element Song by Tom Lehrer." Wally added lifting a limp arm.

S.T.A.R City University
December 19, 8:45 PST

Roy tapped his pencil to a certain rhythm as he filled in the Periodic Table chart. Ms. Ling looked up from her desk to find the source of the familiar tune her eyes landed on Roy, who was humming the Element song as he did his exam.